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The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm. rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning «fellow-countrymen».
What is Cymru?
noun. the Welsh name for Wales.
What is the meaning of the word Wales?
While ‘Cymru’ is the Welsh word for Wales and means ‘friends’ or ‘fellow countrymen’, the word Wales, by which most people know the country, stems from a word used by the invading Anglo Saxons to mean ‘foreigners’ or ‘outsiders’, despite the Welsh being native to the land.
What is the origin of the word Wales?
The words “Wales” and “Welsh” come from the Anglo-Saxon use of the term “wealas” to describe (among other things) the people of Britain who spoke Brittonic – a Celtic language used throughout Britain which later developed into Welsh, Cornish, Breton and other languages.
Who is a famous Welsh person?
Lloyd George – Prime Minister of Britain and founder of the welfare state. Dylan Thomas – Poet and author of Under Milk Wood. J.P.R. Williams – One of the greatest ever Rugby Union fullbacks.
43 related questions found
Who Found Wales?
The history of Wales begins with the arrival of human beings in the region thousands of years ago. Neanderthals lived in what is now Wales, or Cymru in the Welsh language, at least 230,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens arrived by about 31,000 BC.
Why is England called England?
Etymology. England is named after the Angles (Old English genitive case, «Engla» — hence, Old English «Engla Land»), the largest of a number of Germanic tribes who settled in England in the 5th and 6th centuries, who are believed to have originated in Angeln, in modern-day northern Germany.
What is the old name for Wales?
The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm.rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning «fellow-countrymen», and probably came into use before the 7th century.
Why is Wales not on the Union Jack?
The Welsh dragon does not appear on the Union Flag. This is because when the first Union Flag was created in 1606, the Principality of Wales by that time was already united with England and was no longer a separate principality. The Union Flag was originally a Royal flag.
How do you say Police in Welsh?
The verb to police or patrol is very easy to remember as it sounds just like the English: plismona.
How do you say hello in Welsh?
Greetings
- “Bore da” – Good morning. pronunciation: ‘bore-ray-dah’
- “Prynhawn da” – Good afternoon. pronunciation: ‘prin-how’n-dah’
- “Nos da” – Good night. pronunciation: ‘Nohs-dah’
- “Helô / Hylô” – Hello. pronunciation: ‘hell-oh / hill-oh’
How do you say y in Welsh?
The rules governing the letter Y are some of the most confusing in Welsh. Normally it’s pronounced like the u in cut, but in the last syllable of a word it most commonly represents the sound of the ee in beet. Note; This includes words with only one syllable, such as llyn (hlin).
Is Wales in the west?
The basics
Wales is on the island of Great Britain, to the west of England, and covers an area of 20,782 square kilometres (8,024 square miles). That’s around half the size of the Netherlands, a similar size to Slovenia and slightly smaller than the US state of New Jersey.
What is the Welsh word for England?
The word “Wales” in Old English means “land of foreigners”, while “Cymru” in Welsh means “land of friends”, and the Welsh word for England, “Lloegr”, means “the lost lands”.
Why is Scotland called Scotland?
The name Scotland derives from the Latin Scotia, land of the Scots, a Celtic people from Ireland who settled on the west coast of Great Britain about the 5th century CE. … It is derived from Caledonii, the Roman name of a tribe in the northern part of what is now Scotland.
What separates Wales from England?
The England–Wales border (Welsh: Y ffin rhwng Cymru a Lloegr; shortened: Ffin Cymru a Lloegr), sometimes referred to as the Wales–England border or the Anglo–Welsh border, runs for 160 miles (260 km) from the Dee estuary, in the north, to the Severn estuary in the south, separating England and Wales.
What does Wales mean in Old English?
So Wales, along with Cornwall, survived with its customs and language largely intact. The word Welsh is actually an Old English word meaning “foreigner; slave” and at first was applied by the Anglo-Saxons to all the native peoples of Britain.
Why is England not a country?
England fails to meet six of the eight criteria to be considered an independent country by lacking: sovereignty, autonomy on foreign and domestic trade, power over social engineering programs like education, control of all its transportation and public services, and recognition internationally as an independent country …
Is Britain and England same?
Britain is the landmass where England is, England is one country, and the United Kingdom is four countries united together.
Who named England?
England was named after a Germanic tribe called the «Angles», who settled in Central, Northern, and Eastern England in the 5th and 6th centuries. A related tribe called the «Saxons» settled in the south of England. That is why that period of English history is called «Anglo-Saxon».
Who was the first king of Wales?
Llywelyn gained the throne of Gwynedd and Powys by defeating Aeddan ap Blegywryd, and then went on to take control of Deheubarth by killing the Irish pretender, Rhain. Llywelyn died in 1023 leaving behind his son Gruffudd, who perhaps too young to succeed his father, would become the first and only true King of Wales.
Who first settled Wales?
The Historia Brittonum, a history of the Britons composed in north Wales in 829–30, claims that the Britons were originally Trojans who travelled to Britain and became the first people to settle the island.
Are the Welsh Celtic?
Today, Wales is seen as a Celtic nation. The Welsh Celtic identity is widely accepted and contributes to a wider modern national identity. During the 1st centuries BC and AD, however, it was specific tribes and leaders which were named.
The Welsh word for Wales is Cymru which comes from the Welsh name for the people of Wales, Cymry.
Mae Cymru yn wlad mor brydferth.
Wales is such a beautiful country.
Both words are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi which means compatriots. It is suspected that it came into use sometime before the 7th century and was used to describe not only the people of modern Wales but also northern England and southern Scotland. The names Cumbria (a county in England), Cambria, and Cumberland are all derived from the same word.
The word for North Wales is Gogledd Cymru whereas the south is referred to as De Cymru. Gorllewin Cymru and Dwyrain Cymru are West and East Wales respectively.
Fun fact: The word ‘Wales’ derives from the old English Wealh (singular) / Wēalas (plural) which in turn derives from the Proto-Germanic walhaz, the word used to refer to any inhabitant of the Western Roman Empire. The Anglo-Saxons who invaded Britain used the word to describe the Britons and the plural form came to describe the name of their territory, Wales.
How to Pronounce Wales in Welsh
Cymru is pronounced [ˈkəmri] in the south and [‘kəmrɨ̞]* in the north. For those of you who cannot read IPA, it sounds a bit like kum–ree. You can hear the correct northern pronunciation by listening to the audio samples in the video below.
*To learn about the difference in pronunciation between [i] (south) and [ɨ̞] (north) in Welsh, check out the video below.
If you want to say “in Wales”, things become a bit tricker due to the hard-to-pronounce mutations: yn (in) + Cymru = yng Nghymru. You can refer back to the first video to hear how to pronounce it properly.
Dw i’n byw yng Nghymru ers dwy flynedd.
I’ve lived in Wales for two years.
As for “to Wales” and “from Wales”, simply mutate Cymru into Gymru and place the prepositions i (to) and o (from) in front.
Dw i’n symud i Gymru i weithio.
I’m moving to Wales to work.
Dw i’n dod o Gymru.
I come from Wales.
Useful phrases featuring the word Cymru
- Well done, Wales! = Da iawn, Cymru!
- Wales forever! = Cymru am byth!
- Good luck, Wales! = Pob lwc, Cymru!
- I love Wales! = Dw i’n caru Cymru!
- Made in Wales = Wedi’i wneud yng Nghymru
- Come on, Wales! = Dewch ymlaen, Cymru!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article describes the etymology of Wales, a country of the United Kingdom.
Origins[edit]
The English words «Wales» and «Welsh» derive from the same Old English root (singular Wealh, plural Wēalas), a descendant of Proto-Germanic *Walhaz, which was itself derived from the name of the Gaulish people known to the Romans as Volcae and which came to refer indiscriminately to inhabitants of the Western Roman Empire.[1] The Old English-speaking Anglo-Saxons came to use the term to refer to the Britons in particular; the plural form Wēalas evolved into the name for their territory, Wales.[2] The modern names for various Romance-speaking people in Continental Europe (e.g. Wallonia, Wallachia, Valais, Vlachs, the German Welsch, and Włochy, the Polish name for Italy) have a similar etymology.[2][3][4][5]
Historically in Britain, the words were not restricted to modern Wales or to the Welsh but were used to refer to anything that the Anglo-Saxons associated with the Britons, including other non-Germanic territories in Britain (e.g. Cornwall) and places in Anglo-Saxon territory associated with Britons (e.g. Walworth in County Durham and Walton in West Yorkshire).[6]
The modern Welsh name for themselves is Cymry, and Cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. These words (both of which are pronounced [ˈkəm.rɨ]) are descended from the Brythonic word combrogi, meaning «fellow-countrymen».[7] The use of the word Cymry as a self-designation derives from the location in the post-Roman Era (after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons) of the Welsh (Brythonic-speaking) people in modern Wales as well as in northern England and southern Scotland (Yr Hen Ogledd) (English: The Old North). It emphasised that the Welsh in modern Wales and in the Hen Ogledd were one people, different from other peoples.[8] In particular, the term was not applied to the Cornish or the Breton peoples, who are of similar heritage, culture, and language to the Welsh. The word came into use as a self-description probably before the 7th century.[9]
It is attested in a praise poem to Cadwallon ap Cadfan (Moliant Cadwallon, by Afan Ferddig) c. 633.[10] In Welsh literature, the word Cymry was used throughout the Middle Ages to describe the Welsh, though the older, more generic term Brythoniaid continued to be used to describe any of the Britonnic peoples (including the Welsh) and was the more common literary term until c. 1200. Thereafter Cymry prevailed as a reference to the Welsh. Until c. 1560 the word was spelt Kymry or Cymry, regardless of whether it referred to the people or their homeland.[7]
The Latinised forms of these names, Cambrian, Cambric and Cambria, survive as lesser-used alternative names for Wales, Welsh and the Welsh people. Examples include the Cambrian Mountains (which cover much of Wales and gave their name to the Cambrian geological period), the newspaper Cambrian News, and the organisations Cambrian Airways, Cambrian Railways, Cambrian Archaeological Association and the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art.[11] Outside Wales, a related form survives as the name Cumbria in North West England, which was once a part of Yr Hen Ogledd. The Cumbric language, which is thought to have been closely related to Welsh, was spoken in this area until becoming extinct around the 12th century.[12]
References[edit]
- ^ Miller, Katherine L. (2014). «The Semantic Field of Slavery in Old English: Wealh, Esne, Þræl» (PDF) (Doctoral dissertation). University of Leeds. Retrieved August 8, 2019.
- ^ a b Davies (1994) p. 71
- ^ (in French) Albert Henry, Histoire des mots Wallons et Wallonie, Institut Jules Destrée, Coll. «Notre histoire», Mont-sur-Marchienne, 1990, 3rd ed. (1st ed. 1965), footnote 13 p. 86. Henry wrote the same about Wallachia.
- ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. (1963). Angles and Britons: O’Donnell Lectures. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. English and Welsh, an O’Donnell Lecture delivered at Oxford on 21 October 1955.
- ^ Gilleland, Michael (12 December 2007). «Laudator Temporis Acti: More on the Etymology of Walden». Laudator Temporis Acti website. Retrieved 29 October 2008.
- ^ Rollason, David (2003). «Origins of a People». Northumbria, 500–1100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-521-04102-7.
- ^ a b Davies (1994) p. 69
- ^ Lloyd, John Edward (1911). «A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (Note to Chapter VI, the Name «Cymry»)». I (Second ed.). London: Longmans, Green, and Co. (published 1912): 191–192.
- ^ Phillimore, Egerton (1891). «Note (a) to The Settlement of Brittany». In Phillimore, Egerton (ed.). Y Cymmrodor. Vol. XI. London: Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (published 1892). pp. 97–101.
- ^ Davies (1994) p. 71; the poem contains the line: ‘Ar wynep Kymry Cadwallawn was’.
- ^ Chambers 21st Century Dictionary. Chambers Dictionary (Revised ed.). New Delhi: Allied Publishers. 2008. p. 203. ISBN 978-81-8424-329-1.
- ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). «Cambria» . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
When you journey into Wales, whether in person or just by looking at a map, you’ll be struck by the wealth and beauty of the nation’s place names: two millennia of history written into the landscape.
Most of Wales’ place names are in the Welsh language, known in Welsh as Cymraeg. But you’ll also find names whose origins lie in English, French, Irish, Flemish, Latin, Norse and British or Brittonic – the language that was spoken here 2,000 years ago and that developed into what we now call Welsh.
Let’s start at the capital. It’s known in English as Cardiff, a name that derives from the medieval Welsh Caerdyf (which also gives us the modern Welsh Caerdydd). The first part of the name is the common Welsh noun caer, ‘fort’. The second part is a form of the river name Taf (English Taff). Linguists have shown that this name – ‘the fort on the river Taff’ – must have first been coined in the British language, back when the Romans occupied Cardiff some 2,000 years ago.
The meanings of Welsh place names are often very transparent to Welsh speakers. Abertawe, for instance, is the aber (‘estuary’) of the river Tawe. But the English name for the city – Swansea – is not ‘the sea of swans’, even though ‘The Swans’ is the nickname of Swansea City Football Club. In fact, the name has its origins in the Norse language of the Vikings. It commemorates the island (‘ey’) of a man called Svein.
Welsh place names can be very logical!»
Dr Dylan Foster Evans
At the other end of the country, the island of Anglesey is probably named after another Norseman called Ongul; but in Welsh, it’s known as Môn. The mainland opposite is called Arfon (literally, ‘opposite Anglesey’). Arfon’s main town is Caernarfon, earlier Caerynarfon (‘the fort in the land opposite Anglesey’). Welsh place names can be very logical!
Even so, we in Wales have long been aware that our place names can be a source of puzzlement to visitors. In the middle of the 19th century, a shopkeeper from Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll (‘St Mary’s church at the pool of the white hazel trees’) on Anglesey thought up a publicity stunt to draw attention to the little town on the new railway line. He concluded that a ridiculously long name would bring in the tourists, and extended the name to the improbableLlanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (‘St Mary’s church at the pool of the white hazel trees near a rapid whirlpool and the Church of St Tysilio of the red cave’). His idea worked. The name now appears on a famous sign that attracts visitors from all over the world.
Earlier visitors to North Wales include the Anglo-Saxon ancestors of the English. Some of them came to what is now Flintshire, and named one of their settlements there Preosta-tun ‘the priests’ farm’. In Lancashire the same name appears in modern English as Preston. But in Wales, the linguistic patterns of Welsh preserved the name in a form much closer to the Anglo-Saxon original – Prestatyn.
In other places, Welsh names were changed by being taken up into English. The modern Welsh name Dinbych (‘the little fort’) has the final –ch sound whose equivalent disappeared from the English language some centuries ago. So two places called Dinbych gave rise to the English forms Tenby in Pembrokeshire and Denbigh in Denbighshire. These rhyme with each other, despite the different spellings. But to avoid confusion, the former – a seaside resort – is known in Welsh as Dinbych-y-pysgod: ‘Dinbych of the fish’.
On occasion, Welsh names can be misleading even to Welsh speakers. The meaning of Cwmrhydyceirw near Swansea, for instance, appears to be obvious: ‘the valley (cwm) of the ford (rhyd) of the deer (ceirw)’. But this evocative name only appears in that form during the 19th century. Earlier sources show it as Cwmrhydycwrw: ‘the bridge at the ford of the beer’. The final element cwrw (‘beer’) has been replaced by ceirw (‘deer’) – no doubt as a result of a Victorian yearning for respectability. The village does have its own pub, though. It’s called The Deer’s Leap!
Finally, we come to the names of the country itself. The English name, Wales, derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘foreigners’, or in particular those foreigners who were under the influence of the Roman empire. The Welsh name for Wales is Cymru, which comes from the plural of Cymro, ‘a Welshman’. The word Cymro is thought to derive from an earlier Brittonic word, combrogos – ‘a compatriot’ or ‘a fellow-countryman’.
And it’s Welsh, the language spoken by the descendants of these ‘compatriots’, that has contributed more than any other to the cultural richness of the place names of Wales.
Briton settlements in the 6th century – settlements of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in Britain, circa 600
In the following, Briton will refer to the Celtic Brittonic-speaking peoples who inhabited Britain south of the Firth of Forth, and who, following the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th century, gradually retreated until the area under their influence consisted of Strathclyde (until the 12th century), Cornwall, present-day Wales and Brittany.
Brittonic was the language of Britain in the Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods, the ancestor language of Welsh, Cornish and Breton.
Of Germanic origin, the noun Welsh is from Old English Wealh, which meant Briton. In Old English, Wealh and its compounds or derivatives were occasionally used of foreigners more generally, particularly in names referring to Gaul or France and their inhabitants. For example, the Old English compound Galwalas meant Gauls, hence Gaul, and Rōmwalas, Rūmwalas, meant Romans.
– Notes:
1: In southern England, Old English wealh was also sometimes used as a common noun to denote a slave or serf, probably on account of many slaves being of British origin in the Anglo-Saxon period.
2: Etymologically, walnut means the nut of the Roman lands (Gaul and Italy) as distinguished from the native hazel. In the languages of these countries the words descending from Latin nux, French noix and Italian noce, when used without qualification, denote the walnut.
Similarly, the cognates of Wealh in other Germanic languages (for instance Old High German Walh, Walah) were used to refer to Romance-speakers. Other examples include Middle High German Walch, Walhe, which meant foreigner, speaker of a Romance language, specifically French person or Italian, and Middle Dutch Wale, which meant speaker of a Romance language, specifically Walloon or French person. Modern Dutch Waal has the same meaning. In modern German, the adjective welsch means Romance-speaking (it particularly refers to Romansh, the Rhaeto-Romance language spoken in the Swiss canton of Grisons).
These Germanic words were probably derived from a Gaulish name recorded in Latin as Volcae, first in Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) by the Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar (100-44 BC). It was the name of several groups of Celtic people, especially a numerous and powerful people in Gallia Narbonensis, in southern Gaul. They were divided into the Volcae Arecomici and the Volcae Tectosages. The former had for their chief town Nemausus, the modern Nîmes, the latter, Tolosa, the modern Toulouse. For Germanic-speakers in the west, this name came to be used as a generic term for speakers of non-Germanic languages, originally Gaulish and, after the Romanisation of Gaul, also Latin and subsequently Romance languages.
Wales, the name of the country in English, is from Old English Wealas, plural of Wealh, which was often used to denote the Britons collectively and hence their lands. There was no unified polity in medieval western Britain, and the concept of Wales as a geographical, ethnic or political unit was a very gradual development. Old English Wealas could refer to Britons in Cornwall, Wales and northern Britain, and also historically to the inhabitants of other parts of Britain before the Anglo-Saxon settlement. Consequently, the name Wealas was sometimes qualified in order to denote a more specific application. For example, Cornwealas and Westwealas designated the Britons of Cornwall, Norðwealas the Britons of (parts of) Wales, that is, of north of Cornwall, Stræcledwalas the Strathclyde Britons. In each case, the word also denoted their respective lands. The compound Brytwealas usually denoted the early Britons.
In the Middle Ages, the Welsh territories consisted of several former kingdoms, subsequently ruled by princes. In the 13th century, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd, established overlordship over all remaining independent parts of Wales and was acknowledged as Prince of Wales by Henry III in 1267 (Treaty of Montgomery). His principality in turn was conquered by Edward I in 1282. Edward conferred the title Prince of Wales on his son and heir to consolidate this conquest. Wales was formally incorporated into the English realm in 1536, and remains part of the United Kingdom, although granted partial self-government in 1999.
In Welsh, the name of Wales is Cymru, the self-designation of its inhabitants is Cymry (singular Cymro, masculine, and Cymraes, feminine), and the corresponding adjective is Cymreig. The name of the language (and the corresponding adjective) is Cymraeg. Cymro probably derives from an unattested Old Welsh combrog, co-lander, compatriot, from com-, with, and brog (modern Welsh bro), region. The latter word is cognate with Old Irish bruig, mruig, boundary, region, and with Old English mearc (modern English mark), boundary, sign, mark. By contrast with combrog, the Latin Allobroges, from Gaulish, meant those from another land. It was the name of a warlike Gaulish people who occupied the region between the Rhône and Lake Geneva.
Cambria was originally the same word as Cumbria, Latinised derivative of Cymry or of Cymru. Cambria and Cumbria were subsequently differentiated, the former being applied to Wales, the latter to the ancient British kingdom which included Cumberland. Cumbria continued to be used for the hilly north-western region of England containing the Lake District. The county of Cumbria was formed in 1974 from Cumberland, Westmorland and northern Lancashire.
The French name for Wales is le pays de Galles because in words of Germanic origin, when initial, the labio-velar approximant /w/ has regularly become the velar /g/. For instance, in the French noun loup-garou, garou corresponds to werewolf (loup was added when the notion of wolf expressed by garou had been forgotten), gaufre corresponds to wafer, and gardien to warden (English guardian is a later borrowing from French). This velar is spelt gu before the vowels e and i, as in guerre, corresponding to war, and Guillaume, to William.